Overwatch Competitive Play will keep changing every season

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Blizzard still has a lot of tweaks it wants to make to Overwatch (opens in new tab)’s Competitive Play mode, but it’s not going to let those push back the first season any longer. Overwatch game director Jeff Kaplan laid out a bunch of the changes he and his team are planning to make in response to tester feedback on the game’s official forums (opens in new tab) while assuring players that the Summer 2016 season is still set to begin soon (opens in new tab).

“While we think they’re good changes to make, we don’t feel that holding back Competitive Play until the Fall is the right thing for the game right now,” Kaplan wrote. “Instead, our goal is to release Competitive Play in our next content patch and kick-off our Summer season with the current ruleset.”

If you’ve tested out Competitive Play recently, you’ll still notice some changes once it goes live: the initial match time (that’s the time you get before either team accomplishes its first objective) will be reduced from 5 minutes to 4 minutes, and the Sudden Death Timer will be reduced from 2:00 to 1:45. These changes affect all game types in Competitive Play, and they will be the main adjustments going into Summer 2016. Blizzard is strongly considering substantial changes to the mechanics of the Sudden Death mode, but you probably won’t see those in effect until fall.

Kaplan says he expects it will take “a few seasons” before Competitive Play is “where we want to be”, since seeing how a real season goes will provide the best possible feedback. It’s good, albeit not surprising (opens in new tab), to see that Blizzard is already planning to play the long game with Overwatch’s newest mode.

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